"Teachers are the gardeners of humankind."

Public Education Advocate

Exodus 5: 10-11 — “And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go ye, get your straw where ye can find it: yet not aught of your work shall be diminished.“

Human willingness to endure suffering has limits. When subjected to an unreasonable workload, those who labor will eventually seek any alternative to ceaseless toil. The burden of national expectations — the edict to leave no child behind, for example — have been placed squarely on the shoulder of educators with predictable results. Educators pose the question, “Where are the increased human and material resources to meet this vastly expanded goal for our Public Schools?” Our society has mostly responded with Exodus 5: 11, see above.

Recently, the media have shared the concerns of school systems struggling to recruit educators into their classrooms. Nationwide, teacher preparation programs also report insufficient enrollment to furnish the replacements for the looming wave of baby-boomer retirements. Do the math: educators are leaving the profession faster than we can prepare their replacements.

These stories are becoming a rite of autumn as schools open, and the trend is no longer sustainable.

Late each spring, thousands-upon-thousands of teachers — most of whom are effective practitioners in the classroom — pack up their materials one last time, raise the white flag of surrender and tender letters of resignation. The issue is most apparent in regions with high concentrations of poverty; it is not uncommon for such schools to experience a complete turnover of the faculty every few years. Dr. Richard Ingersoll established long ago that in excess of 50% of teachers do not make it to a sixth year in the classroom.

It is true that not all teachers leave the profession. A tiny portion will receive promotions. A larger group will migrate to greener educational pastures. Too many, however, succumb to the despair of unwieldy demands in the workplace and simply find another line of work. Recently, during an impromptu exit interview, an about-to-be-former educator responded tearfully when asked what she would do next. “Anything else!” She doubled her salary and works in the IT industry, now.

What is it like to teach in 2015? With but the rarest of exceptions, the teaching profession is characterized by lack of professional autonomy in addressing the educational needs of children, excessive intrusions on personal time, archaic resources, unreasonable caseloads, inadequate facilities and, to top it all off, vilification by the punditry and the political class.

Working conditions are so generally abhorrent that slightly more than 9% of the nation’s teaching force of 4.5 million fails to survive even the first year in public education. Every single year, several hundred thousand teachers simply walk away from a teaching credential that required several years to obtain. Across this thirty year career, a surfeit of educators has only existed during severe economic downturns when other work was scarce.

So, the shortage of teachers does not really exist. The nearly constant churn in the teaching force suggests, instead, the more intractable problem of economically-challenged school systems lacking the capacity to place committed educators in a position to effect positive change in the lives of children. Change that dynamic and a horde of former educators stands ready to return to the classroom.

The National Center on Teacher Quality has proposed five ways that school districts might stem the constant hemorrhaging of potential career teachers. NCTQ proposes the creation of improved career pathways, addressing inequities in teacher placements, embracing teacher-led professional development, supplying more job-imbedded time for collaboration and untethering teacher evaluation from tests. The impediments? Cost implications abound.

Unless the community is content to stifle the aspirations of educators and squander the dreams of children, the focus must soon shift attention away from annual recruitment of novices and over to the retention of more experienced, highly effective educators. Making every classroom a manageable workplace must become the national priority. Our children deserve nothing less.

The annual exodus of teachers from the profession should result in the sounding of klaxons across this nation because it places the next generation of children at risk. Turnover, however, is the only logical outcome of abrogated contracts, classroom overcrowding, obsolete materials, lack of support and leaking roofs. All who abandon the vocation of shaping young minds are declaring forthrightly that they simply refuse to gather their own proverbial straw.

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Corporate profiteers continue to drive the debate around education reform in our public schools. Many contend that pushing highly-qualified educators out the door and hiring less-experienced ones is a cost-effective strategy for staffing challenged schools. Anyone who has experienced difficulties obtaining that first job due to “lack of experience” should grapple with the cognitive dissonance of inexperienced instructors portrayed as a reasonable option for one of the more important tasks in any society: conveying knowledge and cognitive skills to the next generation.

Please, do not believe this agenda is educationally sound or serves the best interest of children! This misguided strategy accomplishes little except the creation of exploitable space in education budgets in order to pillage the public coffers while padding the bottom line of business interests. To accomplish this goal, the privateers need only work systematically to destroy the public’s confidence in those who devote their lives to children. That goal has nearly been achieved, much to our collective chagrin, by consecutive decades of teacher bashing.

Teaching is more difficult than most imagine. Great teachers usually require six to eight years to build a varied repertoire of instructional strategies to meet the needs of all learners. However, most reject the lifestyle of ceaseless labor and abandon the profession long before achieving a thorough mastery of pedagogy.

Today, career educators are advancing the cause of more rigorous teacher preparation standards, peer assistance and review programs, and certification by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. At some point, though, improving academic achievement will require a bit shorter row to hoe for classroom-based educators.

Unfortunately, much of the public appears willing to accept the premise that a few weeks training and youthful zeal suffice for entry into the teaching profession. Welcome to the world of Teach for America and encouraging dilettantes to use the nation’s classrooms as stepping stones on a career path away from the day-to-day grind of delivering instruction.

Touted as part of the solution for supplying teachers in difficult-to-staff schools, Teach For America candidates receive egregiously insufficient training in pedagogy prior to entering the classroom for on-the-job apprenticeships. Then, they spend a couple years in the most challenging education environments imaginable. Unfortunately, TFA candidates are not immune to the well-documented travails of beginning teachers.

A case might be made for the program if, and only if, these “alternatively certified” teachers demonstrated better practice in their first year, or more resiliency in the long term, than do “classically trained” educators. Unfortunately, as a cohort, they do neither.

No affluent community would permit, let alone “encourage”, these marginally prepared educators to staff America’s neighborhood schools just as nobody would board an aircraft piloted by a trainee with zero hours flying solo. Instead, communities where children exhibit the greatest need for highly-effective, experienced educators find themselves locked in the annual cycle of volunteering at recruitment fairs and employment agencies seeking to replace the career educators they should have worked harder to retain in the first place.

[The original version of this “Commentary” appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on Thursday April 10, 2014. ]

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The celebration of International Women’s Month is at hand. Now that we are more than a decade into the new millennium, it is long past time to join the struggle against what French feminists gleefully labeled the “phallocrats“. Women, most frequently charged with the care and custody of children in divorced households, still only earn 78% of what their male counterparts earn for similar labor.

It is reported in Labor’s Untold Story by Boyer and Morais that men had difficulty supporting a family on $15 a week in the post Civil War economy. The years 1860-1865 had seen a 43% increase in wages but 116% inflation.

One is mostly left to imagine the tales of woe and despair experienced by women and children of the same period working 18 hours-a-day at a loom for $3 a week. However, it is known that many thousands died yearly as a result of the unbridled exploitation of the labor force, and countless more were injured and maimed. Hence it should be reverentially recalled that the phrase “Equal Pay for Equal Work” was coined at that time by William H. Sylvis as he attempted to convince his National Labor Union to allow membership for women.

Lamentably, not only would he never see this simple moral precept come to fruition, a century and half later and women are still waiting for simple economic justice. At the beginning of the 21st century, women have improved by less than “two-bits” from the 59 cents on the dollar they earned a couple decades ago.

So, what hope is there for teachers?

This is no idle question. What hope is there for adequate compensation in a profession dominated by an historically exploited class of worker?It goes straight to the heart of the problem with teacher compensation. Women comprise 75 percent of teachers regionally (90 percent at the elementary level!). It is abundantly clear that this society declines to pay women at a level commensurate with male peers in male-dominated professions with similar requirements for credentials.

To date, the answer to that question has been short and sweet. There is not much hope at all. Ideologues offer the same tired alibis and excuses for not compensating teachers. How many of these have you heard?

Teachers have it easy. Teachers already earn too much. Teachers only work 40 weeks a year. Teachers only work 7 ½ hours a day. Teachers are only earning “supplemental” incomes, what used to be referred to as “pin money“. Teachers are not here for a career, etc.

None of these propositions is categorically true. In fact, they border on preposterously false. Still, they do play off popular beliefs and misconceptions about teaching as a profession, not to mention the cavalier attitude that some in this society have toward “women’s work” in general and the general undertow of anti-intellectualism in American society.

In his “White PaperReport on Education in 1988, Tom Brokaw said in his summation, “I don’t care who you are or what you do for living, you do not work any harder than a teacher.” Colleagues at the time expressed shock and amazement that someone from outside the profession had recognized this fact.

Teaching is not an easy line of work and the hours are interminable. The reason new mothers frequently abandon the classroom, when they are able to do so, is that caring for babies virtually precludes being able to devote the countless hours needed for effective lesson-planning and correcting of student work outside the contractual day, nor is the level of financial compensation adequate to justify the hiring of secondary caregivers.

Those unable to take a hiatus – single mothers come to mind -often pay terrible prices in lost time with their children and the financial drain of day care.

There has been a vast demographic change in recent decades. According to the Brookings Institute Center in “A Region Divided,” roughly 12.7 percent of homes in Prince George’s County were single parent households in 1996, which constituted a 27 percent share of such households in the metropolitan region. In 80 percent of those households the single parent was a woman. Furthermore, the average single father earned $36,364 in 1997 and the average single mother $23,040.

We do not know how many single parents are teachers, but many of my colleagues are single with children for any variety of reasons. However, we do know that fewer men go into teaching, and inability to support a family on the prevailing wage is one of the justifications frequently cited. So it is not unreasonable to suppose that single mothers are disproportionately hurt by lower salaries for teachers, especially when computations are made for breaks-in-service for child rearing.

Therefore, as our budgeting season is in full swing, let us realize that teacher compensation is also a feminist issue. This campaign must start with some small battle to be fought, and hopefully won. So what better way could there be to celebrate International Women’s Month than by joining in the struggle to eliminate gender-based inequities in compensation …

Furthermore, let us begin with the professions dominated by women, namely teaching and nursing. It would be good for women. It would be good for children. For if it is true that justice delayed is justice denied, this is justice that is far too long overdue.

[The original “Viewpoint” appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal on March 9, 2000. It has been revised and updated.]

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The determined enemies of public education currently are working, mostly behind the scenes, to undermine the public’s confidence in what once was, and still should be, among our most revered institutions: the public schools.

Certain ideologues will argue that the education of children does not fall within the purview of government, and that education is far too important an issue to be entrusted to those in public service. However, the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States directs our representatives to “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.”One would be hard pressed to name one human endeavor that will better bestow prosperity on posterity than facilitating a complete education for all citizens.

Is there any more reliable way to oppress a people than by fostering conditions that permit ignorance to fester? The Founding Fathers were abundantly clear on that topic. The very survival of our democracy – perhaps even the survival of our species – depends upon our collective resolve to deliver an adequate and equitable education to all children. To paraphrase Anne Sexton, the dissemination of knowledge must remain the awful rowing toward justice.

Our most challenged schools are wrongly touted as representative of failed education policy and reforms. Frequently, corporate reformers propose solutions that favor private institutions and choke off the funding for public ones; vouchers, charters, tax credits, and accountability measures deliver advantages mainly to more affluent citizens and condemn the most disadvantaged of our society to a fraction of a complete education. One conservative radio talk show host likes to speak dismissively of the “public screwels“, and his colleagues on the airwaves echo the Big Lie, ad infinitum, by inculcating listeners with anti-public school propaganda. “The schools are failing! Teachers are not teaching!”

Ample evidence to the contrary remains invisible to eyes that refuse to see.

Researchers have clearly demonstrated that economically disadvantaged children in so-called poorly performing schools arrive in pre-school already lagging behind their peers. Typically, such children make gains during the school year and then lose ground again during the summer hiatus. In other words, their teachers are teaching but systematic reinforcement of acquired skill is lacking outside of the classroom. The evidence suggests that the better-equipped schools and extra-curricular educational enrichment programs furnished to economically privileged children skew the performance curve on standardized assessments across the scholastic career.

As for the teacher retention issue, the 38-week school year and the 7.5 hour school day are always used as a justification to summarily dismiss demands for professional compensation for educators.

“What are teachers complaining about?” the naysayers ask. Well, even a cursory investigation reveals that an overwhelming majority of committed educators devote 10 to 12 hours-a-day to the required tasks of delivering effective instruction with little hope of finding any respite. Meanwhile, teachers are also required to implement new top-down reforms du jour, and to obtain an advanced degree that maintains certification for a compensation package that renders it impossible to support a family without a second job…

Is it really any wonder that more than half of all newcomers to the profession find themselves unable to endure more than five years in our overcrowded classrooms? Teachers have long advocated for lower class size to permit more individualized attention for every child , but the current funding structure based on property values virtually guarantees that school districts dominated by poverty will experience unfavorable staffing ratios.

Ironically, critics of public education praise reports that show home-schooled children outperform their peers from the public schools on standardized assessments. No public school teacher managing classes of more than three dozen students is shocked by this statistical tidbit and would likely claim that it supports the argument in favor of reducing class size. However, home schooling will never be a realistic option for a working, single mother of two seeking a brighter future for her children. Her children deserve to be nurtured in a well-funded, adequately-staffed neighborhood school.

A truly just society would allow no lesser school to exist; it is simply inexcusable that the wealthiest nation on the planet continues to shirk the duty of nurturing the intellectual growth of all children.

[The original version of this “Viewpoint” appeared on April 23, 2003 in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal.]

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Our nation remains engaged in a profound philosophical debate about the overall direction that education reform shall take, and two intransigent factions have yet to find a workable middle path. However, it is difficult to achieve a compromise when legislators lend credence, first and foremost, to those who are able to fund political campaigns rather than to those who spend their professional lives with children.

Educators tend to believe that curricula must be shaped to meet the needs of children and business model reformers tend to believe that children must be shaped to meet the demands of the curricula. Educators tend to devote their efforts to inspiring children to become lifelong learners; the corporatists tend to covet short term results on the acquisition of necessary job skills. Thus far we have been engaging in arguments of “either/or” when we should be finding a path to “both/and”…

For those in the education community, the views of corporate reformers might hold a bit more sway if young people arrived in our classrooms like identical little widgets manufactured in controlled environments with exacting mechanical precision, or even if learners simply were shown to process knowledge in much the same way and at the same pace. Neither assertion, however, applies to children at all.

The wide variance in acquired skills and knowledge of students manifests itself in classrooms at all levels, but it originates between the cradle and pre-kindergarten, well before children meet their first teacher. A kindergarten teacher may supervise between 15 to 30 students who, during the first five years of life in the home, have been exposed to as few as 3,000,000 or as many as 15,000,000 spoken words in the years preceding registering for school.

That one variable, alone, likely affects the academic progress of students and causes repercussions throughout an academic career.

Groups of children, however, present a host of variables of nearly equal scope and gravity. Every day, the classroom teacher must deal with standard deviations above and below the mean for any number of traits, such as: native intelligence, intrinsic motivation, curiosity, the care and attention of nurturing adults, the influence of appropriate role models, English as a Second Language, access to educational resources and adequate nutrition.Children are as infinite in combinations and permutations as are snowflakes, and little people are very nearly as fragile.

As a nation, we appear to love cute slogans like No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top. However, “To the victor goes the spoils!” and “Winner takes all!” are poor drivers for educational achievement. We seem to forget that only one person wins a race. Affluent children tend to start their schooling with an enormous head start in that race long before they ever meet their first teacher, and too many disadvantaged children start that race with their legs bound together at the starting line.

“No man is an island…” wrote John Donne. Rather than succumb to pressures to subject children to endless competition and social darwinism in the classroom, we must remember that great accomplishments in life are usually the products of cooperation and collaboration. Finally, until our social policies more efficiently ensure that children begin their schooling with all requisite skills for academic achievement, educators will need to focus on adapting curricula to meet the needs of children and not the other way around.

[The original version of the “Commentary” appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on Thursday, March 20, 2014. It has been revised and updated.]

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After having the temerity to outwit the gods and deny them their vengeance, upon his death Sisyphus was condemned in the afterlife to an eternity of rolling a boulder up a mountainside. In his landmark essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus claimed that Sisyphus was superior to his fate in the moments of respite after the boulder crossed the summit and rolled back to the base of the mountain. Camus further suggested that, in those moments of rest before the next bout with his eternal labor, we must imagine Sisyphus as joyful.

The logic of that last proposition can prove elusive, but the fate of Sisyphus effectively demonstrates the existential conundrum of each individual forging meaning out of the perceived absurdity of meaninglessness. As Sisyphus purchases a few moments of repose by his grueling labor, he becomes the ultimate existential hero. He conquers the absurd by finding a purpose in a situation that appears hopelessly futile.

The Sisyphus myth is an apt metaphor, albeit an imperfect one, for the fate of teachers today. It is imperfect because Sisyphus discovers purpose in a futile task while teachers often discover futility in work most meaningful.

The latter seems infinitely more cruel.

Teachers, at least those committed to optimizing educational opportunities for children, are the spiritual stepchildren of Sisyphus. Their mountain takes three decades to climb and the boulder seems to grow inexorably by accretion. The constants in the professional life of teachers are requests, directives, and even longings, to do ever more for their students, accompanied by the illogical corollaries that fewer resources will be allocated and less time will be allotted.

At least Sisyphus knew how he had offended Zeus to arrive at his fate.

Teachers scratch their heads and wonder how their neighbors can stand by and silently witness what is happening to those charged with awakening young minds. Teachers also wonder how their neighbors can acquiesce to a community bent on funding conditions in our schools that promote little more than intellectual Darwinism for our children.

At least teachers do not labor for all eternity. Teachers can exercise free choice and walk away from this sublime torture called teaching at any time. Most do just that within six years. But for many, that act of surrender is a worse fate than pushing the boulder could ever be.

To no avail my parents always advised me to be careful when I wished for something. Like many children I did not heed them. All I ever really wanted to do was teach.

Now, it seems that teaching is just about all I do.My participation in outside interests has declined precipitously across my years in the classroom.

The martial arts are out. Lobbying elected representatives and fighting for school funding takes precedence.

Music is out. Once a constant companion, that old guitar in the corner has not been touched in years while my computer keyboard has nearly become an added appendage.

Sustained Silent Reading for pleasure is out. That never-ending pile of papers always beckons for correction.

Astronomy is out. Stargazing on distant mountaintops unfortunately involves remaining awake well past sunset after somewhere between eleven and fourteen hours have been devoted to my livelihood.

How has it come to this? That is a simple question. Teaching is a to-do list that grows by twelve items a day with only sufficient time to eliminate five, and three of those five items have nothing to do with organizing instruction or assessing its effectiveness.

According to Camus, the gods “…quite reasonably thought that there is no more terrible punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” Sisyphus, however, still has some small chance at hope. He can accomplish his assigned task and earn a momentary reprieve from his punishment. Sisyphus can still put his shoulder to the boulder, acquire purchase, and achieve the summit. It would be a far worse punishment if the boulder never moved.

Compare that to the lot of teachers. Ideally, our goal is to make a scholar of every child. Failing that, the teacher’s mission is to inspire children to make maximum use of their talents. Not having the means to accomplish these noble goals leads to feelings of frustration and futility.

A normal day for a typical teacher comprises more than 9,000 teacher/student minutes. Nearly three-dozen children arrive periodically for a daily total of 270 minutes of instruction. If the instruction is to be dynamic, tack on 4 ½ hours of planning time. If teachers are to hold students accountable for their learning, marathon sessions of correcting papers must occur. The daily grind is interminable.

The non-instructional time of the contracted day is largely consumed by other-duties-as-assigned. Do not forget to be at your door before the school day begins and between classes. Do not neglect to be at your duty station. Prepare to stand in a long line at the photocopier as colleagues deforest the planet to cope with textbook shortages and obsolete materials. Watch those “quick” phone calls to parents become 45 minute planning-period-killers. During lunch, students come with résumés in search of letters of recommendation, or to make-up a quiz, or to seek help. It never ends.

Teachers are systematically denied the necessary time, resources and circumstances to achieve the desired goal of preparing children for this new century.

To paraphrase some homespun southern wisdom: sorry, but that rock just don’t roll.

[This is a slightly revised reposting of a 2001 Commentary in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal. Things have changed for the worse in the intervening years thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top. ]